Michael Fassbender and director Steve McQueen’s second feature together is a difficult one to look at. Like his debut Hunger, Shame hangs about the screen, cold and stark, each frame meticulously composed and static and, where his main concern first time around was hunger striker Bobby Sands deprivation, this time around McQueen takes a long hard stare at a successful man’s addiction to sex.

It seems like the only smiling face in Alexander Payne’s latest film is over and done with in the opening 15 second shot. A woman on a jet ski whipping through the waves somewhere in Hawaii. In the next shot that woman is in a coma and beside her bed sits a pensive husband…

This obviously loving, quite beautiful but slightly overlong and scattershot adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s early novel of corruption in Puerto Rico ends with Johnny Depp’ Paul Kemp sailing away on a stolen yacht into the wild blue yonder. That is, shortly after screaming about corruption, failure and the “Smell of bastards”, a typically contradictory Hunterism and it’s not the first time throughout the Bruce Robinson helmed The Rum Diary that the film feels a little confused…

Exploding heads, guns made of human bodies, disease, vomit and even James Woods’ very own vagina have all made us squirm throughout David Cronenberg’s films but is it that odd to suggest that the most horrific and disturbing thing Cronenberg has shot yet is Keria Knightley’s insane facial contortions in A Dangerous Method?

Martin Scorsese has a filmic brain that few directors of his generation could challenge. Effected by Cassevetes early on he honed his skills in the grit and grime of the mean streets of New York city and has since portrayed some of the most horrific, corrupt families ever put to screen. With Hugo however he leaves all of his vicious ways behind to make a family film which ends up being more; A beautiful and touching love letter to the fantasy of film itself…

Woody Harelson’s big ole face occupies nearly every frame in Rampart, Oren Moverman’s second film directing him. It’s a movie which takes it’s place proudly and loudly in the cannon of Hollywood bad cops alongside Fererra and Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, and Curtis Hanson’s L.A Confidential framing the city of L.A just as filthily as it’s main character study…

Another Sci-Fi film which sadly falls into the category of being “well imagined but poorly executed” Andrew Nichols’ In Time is an obvious parable for modern capitalism in which time has become currency…

Openly endorsing a documentary re-enacting the peculiar social situation which led to a man’s death from having receptive anal sex with a horse in Washington, USA isn’t something I thought I’d be doing today. But after seeing and pondering Robinson Devor’s beautifully filmed doc at great length it would seem I’m doing exactly that…

First time feature director Asger Leth takes an old cops and robbers cliche and, apart from some short lived moments of vertigo, does precisely nothing with it. The man in question is near mute poe faced ex cop and escaped criminal Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) who chooses the outside of the 20th floor of a building to make a media frenzied claim of innocence…

The Tenant, the last film in a loose trilogy dealing with urban loneliness at its most horrific, is far funnier and darker in atmosphere in many ways than both Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion…

Josh Trask, the director of Chronicle is only 26 years old. His $15m film, set between the endless gargle of “found footage films” and “super hero multiplex fodder” about a group of high schoolers who stumble upon a buried UFO and develop the power of telekinesis is played out wonderfully…

“…there’s an Austrian movie… it’s about a man killing a family just in order to go back to prison, where he felt better. It’s like a very dark, European version of Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, but much more baroque in it’s filming.” This is Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone, Irreversable, Enter the Void) discussing the technical cinematic influence of one of his favourite films, Gerad Kargl’s horrifically effective and dazzlingly shot Angst…

Michael R. Roskam’s Bullhead is a strange film indeed. It’s part brooding character study, part crime drama and part tragedy set against the backdrop of the crooked, mafia run, drug enhancing, Belgian cattle trade…

Burton and Depp’s everlasting collaboration falls further into an out and out mess as their eighth film comes to a close. Dark Shadows is a reproduction of a horror series shown after school every day in the houses of suburban America. Screened in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a period of time in which the USA was in constant turmoil and the children and young adults of the day could escape into it’s gothic charm…

Fast rising Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo completely bypasses the sweeping Back to the Future’s of the cinematic world in this terrific low budget time travel flick. Conundrums which are over played in time travel films (going back to 1939 and killing Hitler for example) are eschewed for a miniature play on paradox involving only 4 characters and 3 locations and a 1 hour time travel window…

Wes Anderson’s latest is a glossy reissue package of everything that has come before it. Beautiful, Colourful, as immaculately composed as ever, dry, dark and sweetly funny, it certainly won’t win over Anderson’s detractors but for those of us who have wanted to live in one of his 7 films in one capacity or another or at least relive them over and over, the experience is only honed and deepened, making the fairy tale titled Moonrise Kingdom one of his best and definitely one of the best films of the year…

The majority of features and reviews written about Markus Schleinzer and his harrowing, masterfully crafted and deeply affecting debut film Michael have almost certainly all included a variation on this sentence: “Schleinzer has been working with Micheal Haneke for around 20 years as his casting director”

The Woman, which spurned walk outs, injuries and a very funny ranting youtube clip featuring one Captain Indignant when it debuted last year at Sundance, expands on the barrage of torture porn which we’ve all become accustomed to in one way or another and attempts to subvert a genre by unevenly using the genre itself…

Nuri Ceylan’s wonderful examination of the smaller aspects of life overtaking the drama of it all is a slow paced, dark and fascinating journey. At 158 minutes and falling under the banner of the causal film goer as “a movie where nothing happens” Once Upon a Time in Anatolia seems not to care in the slightest and, frankly, it’s all the better for it….

Gustavo Taretto’s utterly charming debut could well be the best romantic comedy without a hint of, what any mainstream audience would call, romance at all…